Today I had an enlightening experience in the fine art of negotiating. I thought I’d share this experience here in the hope that you will benefit personally or help benefit your company by saving money when buying.

I work for a telecom company and at this time of year there are a lot of conferences which always prove to be great opportunities to refresh existing contacts and meet new prospects for future business. As useful as these conferences may be, the tickets are by no means cheap and whenever I see the price I hear my CFO saying in his stern, authoritive voice “was this really necessary?” while he subtly waves the invoice in front of my face.

Now for one particular conference coming up in Prague I saw the chance to save our company some money and avoid the inevitable confrontation with members of our finance department. It read: special discount for local companies. Great, I thought, we’re not based in Prague but we have a subsidiary there so surely we qualify for the discount.

You can imagine my fury when our application was returned with the note:

“Thank you for your application. Regrettably we cannot qualify you as a local operator”

Armed with my phone I embraced myself for a heated negotiation battle. I’ll show them who’s the local operator here!

The sales person for the conference picked up the phone and in a friendly voice said: “Hello, this is Carl speaking. How can I help?”.

“Carl”, I replied, “this is Philipp speaking. I am calling about my application for the conference in Prague. I must say I’m angry that you refused to grant us the local operator discount”. What an entry, I thought, that’ll put him off balance.

He continued his friendly tone and countered, “Ah yes, I remember and please let me explain. You’re company is not based in Prague and although you do business here we have decided that you are not a local operator.”

My inner temperature was rising; I was boiling inside. “What!? Surely we are a local operator, we don’t just do business in Prague, we also have a subsidiary there, surely you would consider a Prague company regardless of who owns it a local company?” I was convinced I nailed him, indeed pierced him with my logic. There was no escape from this argument.

“I understand Philipp, but we have these kind of requests often, there is nothing I can do. My superior will tell you the same.”

I realized I was getting no where. Neither my aggressive behavior nor my attempt to reason with logic had won him over. In short, I had blundered.

Then I had a moment of inspiration.

I had been reading Dale Carnegie’s masterpiece book “How to win friends and influence people” and an entire section was devoted to winning people over to your way of thinking. These we’re the principles that suddenly came to light in my mind:

• The best way to get to most out of an argument is to avoid it
• Get the other person to say “yes” as often as possible
• Talk in terms of the other person’s interests
• People love the sound of their own name

In a split second I changed my tactic:

“Carl”, I started over, “am I correct in thinking that you want us to participate at this conference?”

“Yes, of course”, he replied, somewhat astonished that I would ask a question with such an obvious answer.

“Carl, I understand that you are a sales person like myself, is this correct too?” I continued.

“Well, yes” he answered, with slight hesitation, probably wondering what I was up to.

“And if I am not mistaken you will receive a commission when you sell me the tickets?” I asked.

“Yes!” he exclaimed and even though I couldn’t see his face his tone of voice suggested a newly injected enthusiasm.

I know I had found the magic words that would win him over, the key to unlock the door to his goodwill. When I asked him to reconsider giving us the discount he promised to call me back within the hour after checking with his superior. When he called me back he said that it had been a hard fight but he would give me the full discount.

So it is true after all: we as humans are governed by emotions and not by logic. Speaking in a friendly way, eliciting positive responses and talking in his interest won over the other person where aggression and reasoning failed miserably. The nice thing about this conversation was that we both profited — he won his commission and I saved money — and that, after all, is what business and dealing with people is all about.